DTV Issues Persist

Five days after the national transition to all-digital television, WUSA, Washington DC's CBS affiliate (Channel 9), and WJLA, the ABC affiliate (Channel 7), have disappeared from screens around the region. The stations were the only two in the Washington area to move their digital signals from UHF to the VHF frequencies they once used for their analog broadcasts. That has left thousands of viewers without access. It is estimated tens of thousands of Americans lost channels or received choppy video after 971 TV stations on Friday shut off their analog signals and migrated entirely to digital broadcasts. The FCC has been advising viewers experiencing trouble to have their converter boxes rescan the airwaves for digital TV signals that moved to new frequencies last week. For those not helped by that, the FCC put out an advisory Monday on its website recommending "double rescanning": disconnecting the antenna from the TV, rescanning, unplugging the converter box for a couple of minutes, turning the converter box back on, reconnecting the antenna and scanning one more time.